1GPGSM(1) GNU Privacy Guard GPGSM(1)
2
6 gpgsm - CMS encryption and signing tool
7
9 gpgsm [--homedir dir] [--options file] [options] command [args]
10
14 gpgsm is a tool similar to gpg to provide digital encryption and sign‐
15 ing services on X.509 certificates and the CMS protocol. It is mainly
16 used as a backend for S/MIME mail processing. gpgsm includes a full
17 features certificate management and complies with all rules defined for
18 the German Sphinx project.
19
25 Commands are not distinguished from options except for the fact that
26 only one command is allowed.
27 Commands not specific to the function
33 --version
37 Print the program version and licensing information. Note that
38 you cannot abbreviate this command.
39 --help, -h
42 Print a usage message summarizing the most useful command-line
43 options. Note that you cannot abbreviate this command.
44 --warranty
47 Print warranty information. Note that you cannot abbreviate
48 this command.
49 --dump-options
52 Print a list of all available options and commands. Note that
53 you cannot abbreviate this command.
54 Commands to select the type of operation
59 --encrypt
63 Perform an encryption. The keys the data is encrypted too must
64 be set using the option --recipient.
65 --decrypt
68 Perform a decryption; the type of input is automatically deter‐
69 mined. It may either be in binary form or PEM encoded; auto‐
70 matic determination of base-64 encoding is not done.
71 --sign Create a digital signature. The key used is either the fist one
74 found in the keybox or those set with the --local-user option.
75 --verify
78 Check a signature file for validity. Depending on the arguments
79 a detached signature may also be checked.
80 --server
83 Run in server mode and wait for commands on the stdin.
84 --call-dirmngr command [args]
87 Behave as a Dirmngr client issuing the request command with the
88 optional list of args. The output of the Dirmngr is printed
89 stdout. Please note that file names given as arguments should
90 have an absolute file name (i.e. commencing with / because they
91 are passed verbatim to the Dirmngr and the working directory of
92 the Dirmngr might not be the same as the one of this client.
93 Currently it is not possible to pass data via stdin to the Dirm‐
94 ngr. command should not contain spaces.
95 This is command is required for certain maintaining tasks of the
97 dirmngr where a dirmngr must be able to call back to gpgsm. See
98 the Dirmngr manual for details.
99 --call-protect-tool arguments
102 Certain maintenance operations are done by an external program
103 call gpg-protect-tool; this is usually not installed in a direc‐
104 tory listed in the PATH variable. This command provides a sim‐
105 ple wrapper to access this tool. arguments are passed verbatim
106 to this command; use '--help' to get a list of supported opera‐
107 tions.
108 How to manage the certificates and keys
115 --gen-key
119 This command allows the creation of a certificate signing
120 request. It is commonly used along with the --output option to
121 save the created CSR into a file. If used with the --batch a
122 parameter file is used to create the CSR.
123 --list-keys
126 -k List all available certificates stored in the local key data‐
128 base. Note that the displayed data might be reformatted for
129 better human readability and illegal characters are replaced by
130 safe substitutes.
131 --list-secret-keys
134 -K List all available certificates for which a corresponding a
136 secret key is available.
137 --list-external-keys pattern
140 List certificates matching pattern using an external server.
141 This utilizes the dirmngr service.
142 --list-chain
145 Same as --list-keys but also prints all keys making up the
146 chain.
147 --dump-cert
151 --dump-keys
153 List all available certificates stored in the local key database
154 using a format useful mainly for debugging.
155 --dump-chain
158 Same as --dump-keys but also prints all keys making up the
159 chain.
160 --dump-secret-keys
163 List all available certificates for which a corresponding a
164 secret key is available using a format useful mainly for debug‐
165 ging.
166 --dump-external-keys pattern
169 List certificates matching pattern using an external server.
170 This utilizes the dirmngr service. It uses a format useful
171 mainly for debugging.
172 --keydb-clear-some-cert-flags
175 This is a debugging aid to reset certain flags in the key data‐
176 base which are used to cache certain certificate stati. It is
177 especially useful if a bad CRL or a weird running OCSP responder
178 did accidentally revoke certificate. There is no security issue
179 with this command because gpgsm always make sure that the valid‐
180 ity of a certificate is checked right before it is used.
181 --delete-keys pattern
184 Delete the keys matching pattern. Note that there is no command
185 to delete the secret part of the key directly. In case you need
186 to do this, you should run the command gpgsm --dump-secret-keys
187 KEYID before you delete the key, copy the string of hex-digits
188 in the ``keygrip'' line and delete the file consisting of these
189 hex-digits and the suffix .key from the ‘private-keys-v1.d’
190 directory below our GnuPG home directory (usually ‘~/.gnupg’).
191 --export [pattern]
194 Export all certificates stored in the Keybox or those specified
195 by the optional pattern. Those pattern consist of a list of user
196 ids (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]). When used along with the
197 --armor option a few informational lines are prepended before
198 each block. There is one limitation: As there is no commonly
199 agreed upon way to pack more than one certificate into an ASN.1
200 structure, the binary export (i.e. without using armor) works
201 only for the export of one certificate. Thus it is required to
202 specify a pattern which yields exactly one certificate.
203 Ephemeral certificate are only exported if all pattern are given
204 as fingerprints or keygrips.
205 --export-secret-key-p12 key-id
208 Export the private key and the certificate identified by key-id
209 in a PKCS#12 format. When using along with the --armor option a
210 few informational lines are prepended to the output. Note, that
211 the PKCS#12 format is not very secure and this command is only
212 provided if there is no other way to exchange the private key.
213 (see: [option --p12-charset])
214 --import [files]
217 Import the certificates from the PEM or binary encoded files as
218 well as from signed-only messages. This command may also be
219 used to import a secret key from a PKCS#12 file.
220 --learn-card
223 Read information about the private keys from the smartcard and
224 import the certificates from there. This command utilizes the
225 gpg-agent and in turn the scdaemon.
226 --passwd user_id
229 Change the passphrase of the private key belonging to the cer‐
230 tificate specified as user_id. Note, that changing the
231 passphrase/PIN of a smartcard is not yet supported.
232
238 GPGSM comes features a bunch of options to control the exact behaviour
239 and to change the default configuration.
240 How to change the configuration
246 These options are used to change the configuration and are usually
249 found in the option file.
250 --options file
254 Reads configuration from file instead of from the default per-
255 user configuration file. The default configuration file is
256 named ‘gpgsm.conf’ and expected in the ‘.gnupg’ directory
257 directly below the home directory of the user.
258 --homedir dir
261 Set the name of the home directory to dir. If this option is not
262 used, the home directory defaults to ‘~/.gnupg’. It is only
263 recognized when given on the command line. It also overrides
264 any home directory stated through the environment variable
265 ‘GNUPGHOME’ or (on W32 systems) by means of the Registry entry
266 HKCU\Software\GNU\GnuPG:HomeDir.
267 -v
272 --verbose
274 Outputs additional information while running. You can increase
275 the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to gpgsm, such
276 as '-vv'.
277 --policy-file filename
280 Change the default name of the policy file to filename.
281 --agent-program file
284 Specify an agent program to be used for secret key operations.
285 The default value is the ‘/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent’. This is
286 only used as a fallback when the environment variable
287 GPG_AGENT_INFO is not set or a running agent can't be connected.
288 --dirmngr-program file
291 Specify a dirmngr program to be used for CRL checks. The
292 default value is ‘/usr/sbin/dirmngr’. This is only used as a
293 fallback when the environment variable DIRMNGR_INFO is not set
294 or a running dirmngr can't be connected.
295 --prefer-system-dirmngr
298 If a system wide dirmngr is running in daemon mode, first try to
299 connect to this one. Fallback to a pipe based server if this
300 does not work. Under Windows this option is ignored because the
301 system dirmngr is always used.
302 --disable-dirmngr
305 Entirely disable the use of the Dirmngr.
306 --no-secmem-warning
309 Don't print a warning when the so called "secure memory" can't
310 be used.
311 --log-file file
314 When running in server mode, append all logging output to file.
315 Certificate related options
321 --enable-policy-checks
326 --disable-policy-checks
328 By default policy checks are enabled. These options may be used
329 to change it.
330 --enable-crl-checks
333 --disable-crl-checks
335 By default the CRL checks are enabled and the DirMngr is used to
336 check for revoked certificates. The disable option is most use‐
337 ful with an off-line network connection to suppress this check.
338 --enable-trusted-cert-crl-check
341 --disable-trusted-cert-crl-check
343 By default the CRL for trusted root certificates are checked
344 like for any other certificates. This allows a CA to revoke its
345 own certificates voluntary without the need of putting all ever
346 issued certificates into a CRL. The disable option may be used
347 to switch this extra check off. Due to the caching done by the
348 Dirmngr, there won't be any noticeable performance gain. Note,
349 that this also disables possible OCSP checks for trusted root
350 certificates. A more specific way of disabling this check is by
351 adding the ``relax'' keyword to the root CA line of the
352 ‘trustlist.txt’
353 --force-crl-refresh
357 Tell the dirmngr to reload the CRL for each request. For better
358 performance, the dirmngr will actually optimize this by sup‐
359 pressing the loading for short time intervals (e.g. 30 minutes).
360 This option is useful to make sure that a fresh CRL is available
361 for certificates hold in the keybox. The suggested way of doing
362 this is by using it along with the option --with-validation for
363 a key listing command. This option should not be used in a con‐
364 figuration file.
365 --enable-ocsp
368 --disable-ocsp
370 Be default OCSP checks are disabled. The enable option may be
371 used to enable OCSP checks via Dirmngr. If CRL checks are also
372 enabled, CRLs will be used as a fallback if for some reason an
373 OCSP request won't succeed. Note, that you have to allow OCSP
374 requests in Dirmngr's configuration too (option --allow-ocsp and
375 configure dirmngr properly. If you don't do so you will get the
376 error code 'Not supported'.
377 --auto-issuer-key-retrieve
380 If a required certificate is missing while validating the chain
381 of certificates, try to load that certificate from an external
382 location. This usually means that Dirmngr is employed to search
383 for the certificate. Note that this option makes a "web bug"
384 like behavior possible. LDAP server operators can see which
385 keys you request, so by sending you a message signed by a brand
386 new key (which you naturally will not have on your local key‐
387 box), the operator can tell both your IP address and the time
388 when you verified the signature.
389 --validation-model name
393 This option changes the default validation model. The only pos‐
394 sible values are "shell" (which is the default) and "chain"
395 which forces the use of the chain model. The chain model is
396 also used if an option in the ‘trustlist.txt’ or an attribute of
397 the certificate requests it. However the standard model (shell)
398 is in that case always tried first.
399 --ignore-cert-extension oid
402 Add oid to the list of ignored certificate extensions. The oid
403 is expected to be in dotted decimal form, like 2.5.29.3. This
404 option may used more than once. Critical flagged certificate
405 extensions matching one of the OIDs in the list are treated as
406 if they are actually handled and thus the certificate won't be
407 rejected due to an unknown critical extension. Use this option
408 with care because extensions are usually flagged as critical for
409 a reason.
410 Input and Output
415 --armor
419 -a Create PEM encoded output. Default is binary output.
421 --base64
424 Create Base-64 encoded output; i.e. PEM without the header
425 lines.
426 --assume-armor
429 Assume the input data is PEM encoded. Default is to autodetect
430 the encoding but this is may fail.
431 --assume-base64
434 Assume the input data is plain base-64 encoded.
435 --assume-binary
438 Assume the input data is binary encoded.
439 --p12-charset name
443 gpgsm uses the UTF-8 encoding when encoding passphrases for
444 PKCS#12 files. This option may be used to force the passphrase
445 to be encoded in the specified encoding name. This is useful if
446 the application used to import the key uses a different encoding
447 and thus won't be able to import a file generated by gpgsm.
448 Commonly used values for name are Latin1 and CP850. Note that
449 gpgsm itself automagically imports any file with a passphrase
450 encoded to the most commonly used encodings.
451 --default-key user_id
455 Use user_id as the standard key for signing. This key is used
456 if no other key has been defined as a signing key. Note, that
457 the first --local-users option also sets this key if it has not
458 yet been set; however --default-key always overrides this.
459 --local-user user_id
463 -u user_id
465 Set the user(s) to be used for signing. The default is the
466 first secret key found in the database.
467 --recipient name
471 -r Encrypt to the user id name. There are several ways a user id
473 may be given (see: [how-to-specify-a-user-id]).
474 --output file
478 -o file
480 Write output to file. The default is to write it to stdout.
481 --with-key-data
485 Displays extra information with the --list-keys commands. Espe‐
486 cially a line tagged grp is printed which tells you the keygrip
487 of a key. This string is for example used as the file name of
488 the secret key.
489 --with-validation
492 When doing a key listing, do a full validation check for each
493 key and print the result. This is usually a slow operation
494 because it requires a CRL lookup and other operations.
495 When used along with --import, a validation of the certificate
497 to import is done and only imported if it succeeds the test.
498 Note that this does not affect an already available certificate
499 in the DB. This option is therefore useful to simply verify a
500 certificate.
501 --with-md5-fingerprint
505 For standard key listings, also print the MD5 fingerprint of the
506 certificate.
507 How to change how the CMS is created.
512 --include-certs n
516 Using n of -2 includes all certificate except for the root cert,
517 -1 includes all certs, 0 does not include any certs, 1 includes
518 only the signers cert (this is the default) and all other posi‐
519 tive values include up to n certificates starting with the
520 signer cert. The default is -2.
521 --cipher-algo oid
524 Use the cipher algorithm with the ASN.1 object identifier oid
525 for encryption. For convenience the strings 3DES, AES and
526 AES256 may be used instead of their OIDs. The default is 3DES
527 (1.2.840.113549.3.7).
528 --digest-algo name
531 Use name as the message digest algorithm. Usually this algo‐
532 rithm is deduced from the respective signing certificate. This
533 option forces the use of the given algorithm and may lead to
534 severe interoperability problems.
535 Doing things one usually don't want to do.
542 --extra-digest-algo name
548 Sometimes signatures are broken in that they announce a differ‐
549 ent digest algorithm than actually used. gpgsm uses a one-pass
550 data processing model and thus needs to rely on the announced
551 digest algorithms to properly hash the data. As a workaround
552 this option may be used to tell gpg to also hash the data using
553 the algorithm name; this slows processing down a little bit but
554 allows to verify such broken signatures. If gpgsm prints an
555 error like ``digest algo 8 has not been enabled'' you may want
556 to try this option, with 'SHA256' for name.
557 --faked-system-time epoch
561 This option is only useful for testing; it sets the system time
562 back or forth to epoch which is the number of seconds elapsed
563 since the year 1970. Alternatively epoch may be given as a full
564 ISO time string (e.g. "20070924T154812").
565 --with-ephemeral-keys
568 Include ephemeral flagged keys in the output of key listings.
569 Note that they are included anyway if the key specification for
570 a listing is given as fingerprint or keygrip.
571 --debug-level level
574 Select the debug level for investigating problems. level may be
575 a numeric value or by a keyword:
576 none No debugging at all. A value of less than 1 may be used
579 instead of the keyword.
580 basic Some basic debug messages. A value between 1 and 2 may
582 be used instead of the keyword.
583 advanced
585 More verbose debug messages. A value between 3 and 5 may
586 be used instead of the keyword.
587 expert Even more detailed messages. A value between 6 and 8 may
589 be used instead of the keyword.
590 guru All of the debug messages you can get. A value greater
592 than 8 may be used instead of the keyword. The creation
593 of hash tracing files is only enabled if the keyword is
594 used.
595 How these messages are mapped to the actual debugging flags is not
597 specified and may change with newer releases of this program. They are
598 however carefully selected to best aid in debugging.
599 --debug flags
602 This option is only useful for debugging and the behaviour may
603 change at any time without notice; using --debug-levels is the
604 preferred method to select the debug verbosity. FLAGS are bit
605 encoded and may be given in usual C-Syntax. The currently
606 defined bits are:
607 0 (1) X.509 or OpenPGP protocol related data
610 1 (2) values of big number integers
612 2 (4) low level crypto operations
614 5 (32) memory allocation
616 6 (64) caching
618 7 (128)
620 show memory statistics.
621 9 (512)
623 write hashed data to files named dbgmd-000*
624 10 (1024)
626 trace Assuan protocol
627 Note, that all flags set using this option may get overridden by
629 --debug-level.
630 --debug-all
633 Same as --debug=0xffffffff
634 --debug-allow-core-dump
637 Usually gpgsm tries to avoid dumping core by well written code
638 and by disabling core dumps for security reasons. However, bugs
639 are pretty durable beasts and to squash them it is sometimes
640 useful to have a core dump. This option enables core dumps
641 unless the Bad Thing happened before the option parsing.
642 --debug-no-chain-validation
645 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
646 It lets gpgsm bypass all certificate chain validation checks.
647 --debug-ignore-expiration
650 This is actually not a debugging option but only useful as such.
651 It lets gpgsm ignore all notAfter dates, this is used by the
652 regression tests.
653 --fixed-passphrase string
656 Supply the passphrase string to the gpg-protect-tool. This
657 option is only useful for the regression tests included with
658 this package and may be revised or removed at any time without
659 notice.
660 --no-common-certs-import
663 Suppress the import of common certificates on keybox creation.
664 All the long options may also be given in the configuration file
667 after stripping off the two leading dashes.
668
672 There are different ways to specify a user ID to GnuPG. Some of them
673 are only valid for gpg others are only good for gpgsm. Here is the
674 entire list of ways to specify a key:
675 By key Id.
679 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
680 content or 0x prefix. The key Id of an X.509 certificate are the
681 low 64 bits of its SHA-1 fingerprint. The use of key Ids is
682 just a shortcut, for all automated processing the fingerprint
683 should be used.
684 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
686 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
687 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
688 The last four lines of the example give the key ID in their long
690 form as internally used by the OpenPGP protocol. You can see the
691 long key ID using the option --with-colons.
692 234567C4
694 0F34E556E
695 01347A56A
696 0xAB123456
697 234AABBCC34567C4
699 0F323456784E56EAB
700 01AB3FED1347A5612
701 0x234AABBCC34567C4
702 By fingerprint.
707 This format is deduced from the length of the string and its
708 content or the 0x prefix. Note, that only the 20 byte version
709 fingerprint is available with gpgsm (i.e. the SHA-1 hash of the
710 certificate).
711 When using gpg an exclamation mark (!) may be appended to force
713 using the specified primary or secondary key and not to try and
714 calculate which primary or secondary key to use.
715 The best way to specify a key Id is by using the fingerprint.
717 This avoids any ambiguities in case that there are duplicated
718 key IDs.
719 1234343434343434C434343434343434
721 123434343434343C3434343434343734349A3434
722 0E12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
723 0xE12343434343434343434EAB3484343434343434
724 (gpgsm also accepts colons between each pair of hexadecimal digits
727 because this is the de-facto standard on how to present X.509 finger‐
728 prints.)
729 By exact match on OpenPGP user ID.
732 This is denoted by a leading equal sign. It does not make sense
733 for X.509 certificates.
734 =Heinrich Heine <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
736 By exact match on an email address.
739 This is indicated by enclosing the email address in the usual
740 way with left and right angles.
741 <heinrichh@uni-duesseldorf.de>
743 By word match.
747 All words must match exactly (not case sensitive) but can appear
748 in any order in the user ID or a subjects name. Words are any
749 sequences of letters, digits, the underscore and all characters
750 with bit 7 set.
751 +Heinrich Heine duesseldorf
753 By exact match on the subject's DN.
756 This is indicated by a leading slash, directly followed by the
757 RFC-2253 encoded DN of the subject. Note that you can't use the
758 string printed by "gpgsm --list-keys" because that one as been
759 reordered and modified for better readability; use --with-colons
760 to print the raw (but standard escaped) RFC-2253 string
761 /CN=Heinrich Heine,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
763 By exact match on the issuer's DN.
766 This is indicated by a leading hash mark, directly followed by a
767 slash and then directly followed by the rfc2253 encoded DN of
768 the issuer. This should return the Root cert of the issuer.
769 See note above.
770 #/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
772 By exact match on serial number and issuer's DN.
776 This is indicated by a hash mark, followed by the hexadecimal
777 representation of the serial number, then followed by a slash
778 and the RFC-2253 encoded DN of the issuer. See note above.
779 #4F03/CN=Root Cert,O=Poets,L=Paris,C=FR
781 By keygrip
784 This is indicated by an ampersand followed by the 40 hex digits
785 of a keygrip. gpgsm prints the keygrip when using the command
786 --dump-cert. It does not yet work for OpenPGP keys.
787 &D75F22C3F86E355877348498CDC92BD21010A480
789 By substring match.
793 This is the default mode but applications may want to explicitly
794 indicate this by putting the asterisk in front. Match is not
795 case sensitive.
796 Heine
798 *Heine
799 Please note that we have reused the hash mark identifier which was used
803 in old GnuPG versions to indicate the so called local-id. It is not
804 anymore used and there should be no conflict when used with X.509
805 stuff.
806 Using the RFC-2253 format of DNs has the drawback that it is not possi‐
808 ble to map them back to the original encoding, however we don't have to
809 do this because our key database stores this encoding as meta data.
810
817 $ gpgsm -er goo@bar.net <plaintext >ciphertext
818 gpgsm is often used as a backend engine by other software. To help
824 with this a machine interface has been defined to have an unambiguous
825 way to do this. This is most likely used with the --server command but
826 may also be used in the standard operation mode by using the --status-
827 fd option.
828 It is very important to understand the semantics used with signature
832 verification. Checking a signature is not as simple as it may sound
833 and so the operation is a bit complicated. In most cases it is
834 required to look at several status lines. Here is a table of all cases
835 a signed message may have:
836 The signature is valid
839 This does mean that the signature has been successfully veri‐
840 fied, the certificates are all sane. However there are two sub‐
841 cases with important information: One of the certificates may
842 have expired or a signature of a message itself as expired. It
843 is a sound practise to consider such a signature still as valid
844 but additional information should be displayed. Depending on
845 the subcase gpgsm will issue these status codes:
846 .RS
847 .TP signature valid and nothing did expire
848 GOODSIG, VALIDSIG, TRUST_FULLY
849 .TP signature valid but at least one certificate has expired
850 EXPKEYSIG, VALIDSIG, TRUST_FULLY
851 .TP signature valid but expired
852 EXPSIG, VALIDSIG, TRUST_FULLY
853 Note, that this case is currently not implemented.
854 .RE
855 The signature is invalid
858 This means that the signature verification failed (this is an
859 indication of af a transfer error, a program error or tampering
860 with the message). gpgsm issues one of these status codes
861 sequences:
862 .RS
863 .TP BADSIG
864 .TP GOODSIG, VALIDSIG TRUST_NEVER
865 .RE
866 Error verifying a signature
869 For some reason the signature could not be verified, i.e. it
870 can't be decided whether the signature is valid or invalid. A
871 common reason for this is a missing certificate.
872
878 There are a few configuration files to control certain aspects of
879 gpgsm's operation. Unless noted, they are expected in the current home
880 directory (see: [option --homedir]).
881 gpgsm.conf
885 This is the standard configuration file read by gpgsm on
886 startup. It may contain any valid long option; the leading two
887 dashes may not be entered and the option may not be abbreviated.
888 This default name may be changed on the command line (see:
889 [option
890 --options]). You should backup this file.
891 policies.txt
895 This is a list of allowed CA policies. This file should list
896 the object identifiers of the policies line by line. Empty
897 lines and lines starting with a hash mark are ignored. Policies
898 missing in this file and not marked as critical in the certifi‐
899 cate will print only a warning; certificates with policies
900 marked as critical and not listed in this file will fail the
901 signature verification. You should backup this file.
902 For example, to allow only the policy 2.289.9.9, the file should
904 look like this:
905 # Allowed policies
907 2.289.9.9
908 qualified.txt
911 This is the list of root certificates used for qualified cer‐
912 tificates. They are defined as certificates capable of creating
913 legally binding signatures in the same way as handwritten signa‐
914 tures are. Comments start with a hash mark and empty lines are
915 ignored. Lines do have a length limit but this is not a serious
916 limitation as the format of the entries is fixed and checked by
917 gpgsm: A non-comment line starts with optional whitespace, fol‐
918 lowed by exactly 40 hex character, white space and a lowercased
919 2 letter country code. Additional data delimited with by a
920 white space is current ignored but might late be used for other
921 purposes.
922 Note that even if a certificate is listed in this file, this
924 does not mean that the certificate is trusted; in general the
925 certificates listed in this file need to be listed also in
926 ‘trustlist.txt’.
927 This is a global file an installed in the data directory (e.g.
929 ‘/usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt’). GnuPG installs a suitable
930 file with root certificates as used in Germany. As new Root-CA
931 certificates may be issued over time, these entries may need to
932 be updated; new distributions of this software should come with
933 an updated list but it is still the responsibility of the Admin‐
934 istrator to check that this list is correct.
935 Everytime gpgsm uses a certificate for signing or verification
937 this file will be consulted to check whether the certificate
938 under question has ultimately been issued by one of these CAs.
939 If this is the case the user will be informed that the verified
940 signature represents a legally binding (``qualified'') signa‐
941 ture. When creating a signature using such a certificate an
942 extra prompt will be issued to let the user confirm that such a
943 legally binding signature shall really be created.
944 Because this software has not yet been approved for use with
946 such certificates, appropriate notices will be shown to indicate
947 this fact.
948 help.txt
951 This is plain text file with a few help entries used with pinen‐
952 try as well as a large list of help items for gpg and gpgsm.
953 The standard file has English help texts; to install localized
954 versions use filenames like ‘help.LL.txt’ with LL denoting the
955 locale. GnuPG comes with a set of predefined help files in the
956 data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/help.de.txt’) and allows
957 overriding of any help item by help files stored in the system
958 configuration directory (e.g. ‘/etc/gnupg/help.de.txt’). For a
959 reference of the help file's syntax, please see the installed
960 ‘help.txt’ file.
961 com-certs.pem
965 This file is a collection of common certificates used to popu‐
966 lated a newly created ‘pubring.kbx’. An administrator may
967 replace this file with a custom one. The format is a concatena‐
968 tion of PEM encoded X.509 certificates. This global file is
969 installed in the data directory (e.g. ‘/usr/share/gnupg/quali‐
970 fied.txt’).
971 Note that on larger installations, it is useful to put predefined files
974 into the directory ‘/etc/skel/.gnupg/’ so that newly created users
975 start up with a working configuration. For existing users a small
976 helper script is provided to create these files (see: [addgnupghome]).
977 For internal purposes gpgsm creates and maintains a few other files;
979 they all live in in the current home directory (see: [option --home‐
980 dir]). Only gpgsm may modify these files.
981 pubring.kbx
985 This a database file storing the certificates as well as meta
986 information. For debugging purposes the tool kbxutil may be
987 used to show the internal structure of this file. You should
988 backup this file.
989 random_seed
992 This content of this file is used to maintain the internal state
993 of the random number generator across invocations. The same
994 file is used by other programs of this software too.
995 S.gpg-agent
998 If this file exists and the environment variable
999 ‘GPG_AGENT_INFO’ is not set, gpgsm will first try to connect to
1000 this socket for accessing gpg-agent before starting a new gpg-
1001 agent instance. Under Windows this socket (which in reality be
1002 a plain file describing a regular TCP listening port) is the
1003 standard way of connecting the gpg-agent.
1004
1010 gpg2(1), gpg-agent(1)
1011 The full documentation for this tool is maintained as a Texinfo manual.
1013 If GnuPG and the info program are properly installed at your site, the
1014 command
1015 info gnupg
1017 should give you access to the complete manual including a menu struc‐
1019 ture and an index.
1020GnuPG 2.0.14 2018-07-13 GPGSM(1)